Sometimes you need to quit when you are behind.  I finished up part of my on-going quilting project yesterday, and it was a struggle from the very beginning.  For some reason, when I changed the bobbin thread last, the machine wouldn't sew correctly.  The stitches were good, it just was sewing at erratic speeds and it felt like it was really laboring to sew.  I fought and fought with that - redoing the bobbin, re-threading everything, etc.  I finally forced the machine through a few stitches by hand when it was laboring, and it started sewing correctly.  I should have stopped then, but no...I was on a roll!  

I sewed 20 sets together, and then luckily, decided to make one full square.  It wasn't working!  I went on-line and googled "flying geese' pattern, and found a couple of good sites that showed me what I was doing wrong, and a couple of good hints, and I was off again.  I should have stopped there!  

I ripped out my 20 pieces, and started over again - I picked up my iron (that I had been using all morning) to press out the erroneous stitch line, and.....it spit rusty water on my fabric.  What the heck?  Rusty water?  Where did that come from??  And why didn't it spit it on the dark green fabric instead of the pale beige fabric?    I cleaned up that mess, and continued on my way.  

The sewing machine decided to start eating my fabric.  Really?  Really, truly?  I fought with that for a while, and found a solution (my fabric feeders weren't able to grab the fabric to sew, so the needle was pushing the fabric down.)  I struggled on, and did eventually finish my project - but it took a lot longer than I had planned.  What should have taken a couple of hours at most took like four hours, and I had a major headache when I was done.  At least it is done.  Next weekend, I will be putting everything together, and I hope it goes a little more smoothly!

I mentioned yesterday that I had spent some time crocheting.  Here are the projects I finished:

A coaster:

A snowflake:

A very small bowl (the pattern called for yarn, and I thought I would see what thread would do)

A very large doily.  It is about 20 inches across.